


The Sky is Falling (and through it all I hear your voice)

by interrobangme



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 04:40:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1731491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interrobangme/pseuds/interrobangme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a prompt from the kinkmeme:<br/>"Let's have the thing that everyone wanted but didn't get to see before the timeline ceased to exist: old Charles and Erik reconciling during the Sentinel war." Link: http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/11912.html?thread=22737544#t22737544</p>
<p>Set somewhere between XMFC and DOFP. The moment Charles and Erik decide they can't stand on their own anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sky is Falling (and through it all I hear your voice)

On a godforsaken piece of jagged hillside the figure of Erik Lensherr stood silhouetted in smoke. Above, below, behind, everywhere was smoke. It stung his eyes; his eyes that had seen too much, too many of his people drop to the ground, void of life and dignity. It burned his lungs, which couldn’t remember how grass and sunlight and rain smelled.

Erik stumbled off the craggy rock he couldn’t recall being thrown at and hurled himself back into the fray. He felt his arm clipped by a searing hot knife, slicing through cloth and flesh without hesitation. He ran from the sentinel wielding the knife, saved by a young mutant—one of Charles’—freezing the weapon in place in a block of solid ice. 

Erik’s powers weren’t exactly useful fighting the sentinels. The robots were all made of non-metal polymers and titanium weapons. The designers learned not to employ metals that Erik could manipulate into the weaponry after the launch of the much-anticipated version 2.6 of the sentinel soldiers, which ended with the bots impaled on their own swords, leaking sparks and oil until they’d ignited and burned themselves to a crisp, frozen in their dishonorable, self-inflicted seppuku.

Erik was forced to take a more rudimentary approach to combat. He carried metal on his person—coat hangers, nails, whatever he could grab on short notice—and twisted them into the necks of the electronic creatures. But inevitably, his precious metal would get jammed somewhere deep and he couldn’t retrieve it before he needed to flee.

And that left him here, in a smoldering pit of debris, on a mountain whose name he didn't know because it was just like the battlefield before that, and the one before that. He was far too old to be running and leaping and punching at anything his abused, arthritic knuckles could reach. 

Just as Erik reached the edge of today’s battleground, he felt a familiar presence in his mind. The helmet had long ago been knocked loose and crushed, on another scorched piece of earth. Erik’s speed slowed at the soft brush of Charles’ consciousness against his, until he heard _On your left_ reverberate through his entire being. 

He turned quickly but not fast enough to avoid the impact of an enormous sledgehammer-shaped appendage to the gut. He grunted and rolled sideways into yet another sharp boulder. He felt the overly familiar crunch of broken ribs grinding in his chest. He’d had the air knocked out of him and wheezed for breath, but none would reach his lungs. If he just had a moment to recover himself he knew he could—

But the time for moments had come and gone. This was no fair fight. This was the hunt, an extermination that wouldn’t end until he and all of his kind were dead. 

As he watched through the haze of pain and smoke at the approach of the sentinel’s glowing eyes, his broken body refused to move. His spirit, too, lacked the stamina to cry out, to duck, to do anything at all. The sentinel raised the sledgehammer above Erik’s head for what he knew would be the final blow. _Farewell, Charles,_ he thought as loudly as he could. _Give them hell for me._

_I’m afraid you’ll have to do that yourself, my friend._ And with that, Erik was moving again. Without his command, his body tucked and rolled out of the way just as the rock he’d been in front of was pulverized into dust. All of his pain disappeared, walled off from his senses. Like a puppet on strings his limbs moved in accordance with Charles’ bidding until he was running faster than he had in years. 

_You know, Charles, I’m a bit too old to dash off at your beck and call. Last I checked my hair had gone grey._

_Nonsense, old friend, that’s simply ash from the battle in your hair._ Erik’s thoughts vibrated with his amusement even as his commandeered body dipped below the laser sights of another sentinel. He gave up any consideration of fighting Charles on this. Either he would succumb to his injuries when he reached Charles’ side or he’d gladly die trying.

Sensing the direction Erik’s thoughts were taking, Charles butted in once again. _Besides, at least you have hair to turn grey. The only way I could tell I was getting old was when everyone around me started speaking very loudly and slowly to me._

Erik chuckled at that while his body automatically scaled the hillside and pulled itself up into the mouth of a cave, where Charles Xavier sat in his wheelchair, watching over the struggle below. He shot Erik a glance and said, “We’ll get you to our healing mutant later, Erik, just hold on a bit longer.”

Charles returned his focus to the battle as Erik collapsed beside him, curled around the wheels of his chair seeking the comfort only closeness could bring. Charles mentally sent warnings to his X-Men and the few members of the Brotherhood still in the chaos below. 

Charles’ wall against the pain in Erik’s body began to dissolve and Erik felt the threat of unconsciousness tugging at him. Charles’ hand shot out from the arm of his chair and entwined with his.

“Stay with me, Erik. This will be over soon,” he said. Lightning struck below on the battlefield, presumably from Storm’s latest counter-attack. Looking at Charles’ wrinkled, worried face reflected in the eerie light, Erik sent his thoughts to his friend. He had no strength left for the feebleness of speech.

_Mutantkind itself will all be over soon, Charles. We don’t stand a chance._

_Don’t think that way,_ Charles thundered in his mind. _That’s not the Erik I know. While it may seem hopeless now, I’m certain we can find a path to success. It will take some sacrifices,_ Charles intoned, flashing a series of images and thoughts connected to his plan for Kitty Pryde and the few remaining X-Men into Erik’s brain. 

Erik felt a stirring of hope and nearly snuffed it out. He’d seen so much pain, so much hate, in his lifetime, and for what? To die like an animal put out of its misery. All his work, all of Charles’ efforts over the years, all wasted. But just when he felt most like giving it all up, Charles suffused his mind with thoughts of their brief, cherished time together before Cuba. The long nights and late mornings tangled in bed. Mental whispers sent across the breakfast table. Hungry touching, the electric jolt of skin on skin and the high that could only come with sharing a mental link.

 _I can’t do this without your help, Erik._ Charles gazed down at the crumpled figure of his long-loved partner and his face somehow said more than his mind ever could.

 _Oh all right, Charles,_ Erik thought in his most curmudgeonly voice, even as a trembling hand wiped a tear from his eye. _But you’d damn well better let me rest when it’s all through. I’ve had enough of chasing after you. I’m an old man, you know._

 _Of course, my friend. But not to me._ Charles smiled at him and Erik knew that whatever the outcome of this war, of Charles’ plan, everything was just as it should be at last.


End file.
